If she didn't care, she wouldn't hate him so much
by FairFaringNelly
Summary: James Sirius Potter doesn't have to face the Dark Lord- he just has to face a smashed Ami Grenley (his arch-nemesis). This a one-shot inside my "Exceeding Expectations" storyline- a side-story that doesn't have any real impact on the main plot. James S. PotterxOC. M for Miss Grenley's really, truly un-ladylike language.


**This is so much more entertaining if you imagine Ami's Australian accent.**

**Also. Language ahead. So much language.**

James Potter could think of a lot of things he'd rather be doing. He _could_ be beating Michael Graves in shots. He _could_ have his tongue down Alice's throat in the middle of an intense make-out session. But no, what he was doing was helping an unimaginably drunk Ami-bleeding-Grenley back to her dorms. God, why couldn't he have just left well enough alone? She could have made it back all on her own, right? He didn't _need_ to be her personal crutch.

And would she just shut the hell up for one bloody moment? Ever since he'd dragged her plastered carcass out of the portal, she'd done nothing but assure him how much she hated his fucking guts, that she wished to end him every day they'd ever been at school together, and, oh, did he know, she really hated him. Did he know that? Did he know how much she really, _really _abhorred him? Of bloody course he did! She'd only been telling him for the past ten minutes. He couldn't not know even if he tried really hard!

Beside him, Ami paused to make a strangled, gurgling noise, and shit, if she blew chunks on him, he was going to be so pissed off. This was his favorite party shirt, the one that made him look extremely desirable- or so he'd been told by quite a few girls in the shadows of quite a few darkened doorways. And who was he to doubt a majority?

Ami leaned heavily on his shoulder, shoving her face way too close to his. He pulled a face at her really sour breath. Had she stuck her whole head in a bucket of Fire Whiskey and drank her way out? "Bloody hell, Grenley…" he grumbled, trying not to breathe deeply.

"What?" she blew hotly at him. "What? What is it? What do you want to say, Potter?"

He made a gagging noise to convey his disgust at her breath. He'd never been around a person this drunk without being equally smashed, so the aroma was unpleasantly new. "You smell like the underside of a Troll's foot."

She was silent a moment, until she pushed her nose into his neck and took a great big sniff. "Well, you smell like…" She seemed to struggle with finding her words, her garbled stammers made all the more funny by her accent. "Y'smell like fucking fart… foots."

James glanced over at her to see if she was serious. He was pleased to see that she looked unsatisfied with her own comeback. She really was far less witty when inebriated. "Sure, Grenley. Sure." God, is this how she felt whenever she shot those super complicated jibes at him that took him a while to figure out? Because it felt powerful as hell to be the smarter one. Not that he thought she was _smarter_. She just said smarter things than him. Being in Ravenclaw didn't mean a thing.

"I hate the way you smell," she carried on. "You smell like the pretentious prick you are."

She was probably referring to his cologne. It was good stuff, even if it was Muggle made. All the girls he'd ever been with had liked it, anyways. _He_ liked it too, or he wouldn't have paid twenty-five British Muggle pounds for it. "I am not a-."

A noxious belch erupted from her mouth. "I… eaugh, I hate you. You… You are a prick and I hate you."

Oh, joy. There she went again. "Yeah, I get it. Now why don't you just do me a favor and pass out. Anything so I don't have to hear how much you hate me, you viper."

Ami snorted out an intoxicated giggle. "Tha's a snake. And I'm… I'm a brilliant fuckin' Rakenvlaw, you hear me? I'm a… bird. Eagle-thingy. Ok?" she shouted in his ear.

He hadn't thought she could possibly make less sense than she had for the past ten minutes, but it wasn't the first time he'd been wrong. He'd also never thought he'd be _helping_ the bitch in the first place. "You… ok. Whatever you say." How did one respond to that?

"Caw-caw, motherfuckerrr," she raised a wobbly middle finger.

He jerked backwards to avoid having his eye taken out. Good lord, she looked too serious to be saying something like that. Staying annoyed at her was becoming more and more difficult with every stupid, eternally regrettable thing she did. How was one supposed to be mad at someone who said "caw-caw, motherfucker"?

Ami blinked slowly and swayed away from him. "Like, who even- who in their right mind- would even fuck _you_?"

That. That was how. "Just stop talking, Grenley. I will drop you in this hallway and leave."

"Don't tell me what to… not do. It's _my_ liiiiife," she sang, but quickly turned sulky. "Whatever my mummm says. She doesn't know anything. She doesn't even- _she's_ not a Ralen- Revenwall- bird. Well, she is a bird. I guess. But she's not, an eagle." Her voice dropped to a, well, actually, it was nowhere near a whisper, but she seemed to think it was. "She doesn't even go here."

What he wouldn't give for a camera right then. God, he would have shit on her until graduation. "You know, you're more interesting when you're drunk out of your mind," he commented, trying to think of any spells that might let him capture this moment.

Ami didn't seem to know what to make of that. "Well- you- _you_ are…more- no, less- you are less of a shit-face when I'm drunk. Out of my mind. Am I drunk?" Before he could say anything, she answered herself. "Yes. I am the most drunk. Haha, fuck, that's why I went to that party in the first place, wasn't it?" Again, she continued without allowing him to retort wittily. "Yeh, don't you remember? I was like, what would make life not shhhhitty, and then you were- no, I was- I said it, not you, don't take credit for stuff you didn't say, asshole- and I was like, ALCOHOL."

James shot her a sideways glance. Her lazy smile dissolved into a scowl when their eyes met. "What?"

"You _planned_ to get plastered?" He was no "caw-caw, motherfucker" Ravenclaw, but that didn't sound particularly smart to him. It sounded more like something he would do. Something he had done, in fact.

"Why else does anyone go to those god-awful parties?"

Goddammit, even fall-down drunk, she still made a good point.

She startled him by putting her other arm around his neck, twisting into an awkward sort of sideways embrace. Oh, god, she was finally going to make good on her threats to strangle him. This was the end for him, wasn't it? Shit, what an awful way to go. He'd always thought he'd die a little more spectacularly.

"Ggggggaaaawd, can you stop being so fucking pretty, Potter?"

He nearly broke his neck, snapping it around to stare at her. "What?"

"No," she commanded, and put a hand on his face. "You stop that, with your messy fucking hair and those- those- like, whatthefuck is up with your eyes? Who did you steal your eyes from? That's not even fair."

It's possible that all of this made perfect sense to her alcohol-soaked brain, but he was beyond lost. "What's not fair?"

She dragged her hand down over his face. "Allllll of this. How can such an _asshole_ be so goddamn pretty?" She released his neck to thrown her hands up. "How, I ask you? How?"

Pretty. That was a new one. He'd had "handsome", "hot", "smoking hot", "damn hot", "hella hot", and some girl had even called him "delicious". Never "pretty". If he ignored who'd said it, he might actually be able to take it as a high compliment. Yeah, sure. Why not? "Genes?" he said, shrugging.

Ami looked at him like he was crazy. "You're not wearing jeans..." She leaned backwards to get a look at the back of his pants and nearly pulled them over. "Wait, you are wearing jeans… Huh… I could have sworn you weren't."

"Are you staring at my ass, Grenley?"

She answered without looking away. "Mmmm, yeeesss. Yes. Is that your ass? I guess it is, isn't it? …Your ass looks good in jeans."

Weirdest fucking night ever. What the hell. Ami Grenley just said his ass looked good. The only thing she'd ever said about his ass was how much she wanted to kick it. "What did you just say?" Maybe he'd heard her wrong. Maybe he just wanted to hear her say it again. Oh, fuck.

"God, clean your ears out, you prick." She rolled her eyes. "I saaaaid you have a nice ass."

"That's not what you said."

"Isn't it?"

"No." They were stopped in the hall now. He had no idea how close they were to the Ravenclaw common room. The one time he'd been there, he'd been far too preoccupied with undoing a stupidly difficult bra to notice where he and his date were headed.

"Oh." she cocked her head at him and squinted. "What did I say, then?"

He couldn't conceal his smirk. "You said my ass looked good in jeans."

"Pfft. What. No."

"You did."

"Well- you- I…So what if I did?" her words were challenging, daring him to make something of it.

And James Sirius Potter did not step down from a dare. "Well, I think maybe you don't hate me quite so much as you say you do."

Not that it always turned out right.

Ami's face darkened. Oh, shit. That might have been a bad idea. "What the fuck you on about? Of course I hate you. I hate you exactly as much as I say I do."

"You _just_ said my ass looked good." She was obviously in denial. It happened, sometimes, but they always came to their senses and threw themselves at him in the end.

"Still hate you," she mumbled. With a heavy-handed push against his shoulders, she staggered backwards from him.

Interesting. "Whatever you say, sweetheart," James said lightly.

"I'm not your fucking sweetheart." Her accent turned "heart" into "hart." Now that he thought about it, accents were pretty hot. It'd be better if she were French. God, French girls were damn hot.

He shrugged. "You could be, if you just admit how much you actually like me." Of course he was going to give her hell about all of this later. He would consider it a personal victory if he could get her to actually say it aloud- he would gain school-wide notoriety if he could tell everyone that he also _dumped_ the great Grenley goblin (not that he didn't already have that. You play enough jokes on the right people, you definitely get results). And finally, he would get the ultimate one-up one the only person in school on equal-footing with him.

She blinked and stumbled to the wall for some much needed support. What, did all the alcohol go to her legs? She couldn't even stand in place without dropping. "Fuck you, you prick. I can think you're bangable without actually giving a shit about you."

James stared. What?

Ami seemed to take his silence to mean that she could go on. "'s no different from what you do with all those goddamn fangirls of yours, with their stupid fucking girl-boners for the great James Potter," she spat.

Heat flushed into his cheeks and ears. "Oy, you shut the hell up. Those are nice girls-,"

She might as well have been spewing venom from her lips, her words had so much sting to them. "Oh, yeah, I'm sure they were very nice, so nice, excuse me- I bet they were even nicer when you had your fucking hand up their skirts in the dark corners-."

His fists tightened around the sweat of his palms. He crossed the space between them with a single, long step. "Shut your mouth, Grenley-."

"OR WHAT?" she practically screamed, and he resisted the urge to clap a hand over her mouth. "What are you going to do to me, huh? Are you going to crash into me with your broomstick like you do when you're playing your stupid flying game? Are you going to elbow me in the face like you did to Ewan?"

What the hell? Who was Ewan? What did Quidditch have to do with this? James opened his mouth but the words wouldn't even form in his brain let alone on his lips.

"That's right! Go on! Show me how tough you are, you bastard!"

Jesus Christ, she was loud. At any moment, someone was going to come running round the corner. "Just shut up already, ok-."

"Fucking _make_ me, Potter," Their faces were so near each other. The smell of alcohol still hung about her lips, but there was something else. It wasn't perfume- more of a slightly pine-y musk, mixed with the particular scent one acquired during an intense party. The result was akin to sea air. Salty.

"Do you really want me to?" He had _no_ idea where he was going with that, but he figured he knew what he was doing. Right? She couldn't get to him- he wouldn't let her.

Her eyes flashed. "I'd like to see you try, you cunt-faced wanker."

God, she had a mouth on her. A really nice looking mouth, but when she opened it- bam. No holds barred. A tiny, joking voice in the back of his mind said something about the application of that on her ability to make out.

And then it wasn't a joke, and he really wanted to know if she kissed as ferociously as she insulted, so it only seemed logical to go right on ahead and find out.

What could he say? He had an insatiable curiosity.

She responded to his hands on her face and his mouth on hers very quickly for someone as drunk as she was. There was still something lethargic and languid about her movements, but the intensity was not the kind to be trifled with. Her lips captured his over and over again, and then back and forth it would go, teeth scraping against the soft skin and tongues just barely darting out to tease one another, the never-ending struggle for dominance.

Merlin's saggy baggies, he was really glad his curiosity had won out.

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**A/N: This is just something that was swirling around in my head and driving me crazy until I finally got it out. I don't know why but, I really like my OC Ami. I have a bunch of headcanons about her and James, but I don't know if they'll all turn into fics. I might post about some of them on my tumblr (link on my profile). Also, if you guys liked this/liked the Jami ship, let me know, and I might write a few more one-shots about them.**


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